WebSphere 4.0 Reduces ComplexityWebSphere 4.0 Reduces Complexity

If application integration, Web transaction processing, and Web services are high priorities at your company, then the next iteration of IBM WebSphere Application Server will likely pass muster.

IBM characterizes WebSphere 4.0 Advanced Server Edition as its best attempt yet to provide an adaptive infrastructure--the ability to embrace existing applications and extend their capabilities to new applications and Web services.

Among the enhancements are Java 2 Enterprise Edition 1.2 compliance and support for the Simple Object Access Protocol (Soap); Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI); and the Web Services Description Language (WSDL). Using these facilities, existing applications can be placed in a wrapper and integrated with other systems, and new applications can make use of Web services.

According to Mike Gilpin, a Giga Information Group VP, a couple of issues seem to be at the top of WebSphere users' minds: Has IBM made the product J2EE-compliant, and has it reduced the complexity of earlier versions?

"I've talked to a few beta users, and they said that it was significantly improved over the previous versions," Gilpin says. "It's particularly important for IBM to be able to attract a larger number of independent software vendors to support the platform, which is important to IBM's customers as well."

Key enhancements in WebSphere 4.0 include:

IBM is putting special emphasis on the high-performance, scalability, and security issues at large accounts. WebSphere Application Server is a foundation technology upon which IBM will deploy enterprise integration, mobile-access, collaboration, content-management, commerce, personalization, and portal services. But the company also hopes to provide an entry-level alternative to get its customers started in Web application serving, using the J2EE programming model to create simple Web applications and basic servlets, do simple queries, and read database files.

IBM's application server provides more of the technical underpinning needed to continue to bridge old and new applications. It also provides a platform for the unrelenting change characteristic of contemporary businesses and their IT departments. It supports the new Web services model and better enables the application integration necessary to extend new E-business applications to existing internal and external applications.

A key design goal was to assure rich access to application and transaction data and services running on myriad systems. "Web services are a means of using de facto standards, like Soap and WSDL, to wrap existing Java applications, providing a standard way of communicating with Web services being used by other E-businesses," says Jeff Reser, WebSphere's product manager.

In the area of connectivity, WebSphere includes support for an emerging standard that's expected to be included in J2EE 1.3 called Java 2 Connectivity. In conjunction with that implementation, IBM has been working with a number of enterprise resource planning software and other application vendors to come up with a collection of J2EE adapters to connect to and manage connections from a number of systems, including Oracle, PeopleSoft, SAP, and IBM's own CICS and IMS systems.

IBM has also updated the collection of adapters and connectors so they're compliant with Java 2 Enterprise Edition 1.2, and they work with and can be called from this new Java 2 Connectivity layer. The Java 2 Connectivity architecture provides a common layer within the WebSphere run-time environment, providing Web applications with a consistent way of calling these new connectors. J2C will most likely become a part of J2EE 1.3.

IBM has also added support for the Java Message Service XA, a Java mapping of the industry standard XA interface--well ahead of the competition. This allows transactions to be coordinated across MQSeries message-queuing systems and relational databases. Support for Sun Microsystems' JMS API will be required in J2EE 1.3. Message Driven Beans, a new type of Enterprise JavaBeans, will make it possible for application components to send and respond to messages. Support for the JMS API means that applications are much more flexible, because they no longer need to be tied to a specific vendor's message-oriented middleware.

By integrating better with the MQ world, message queuing, and asynchronous transactions, WebSphere will be able to more deftly handle multipart transactions, which are increasingly required by dynamic E-business applications.

IBM WebSphere Application Server version 4.0 is available in three configurations: Single Server, Advanced Edition, and Developer Edition.